Career

After passing the New York
bar examination in 1926, Marcatonio began practicing law. He clerked at the law firm of
Hale,
Nelles &
Shorr, known for its representation of radical individuals and organizations. There, he worked with labor lawyer
Joseph Brodsky, who "significantly contributed to his left orientation" toward
Marxism.[2]

In 1924, he became campaign manager for the congressional campaign of
Fiorello La Guardia, then a Progressive-Socialist. Together, LaGuardia and Marcantonio also campaigned for U.S. Senator
Robert M. La Follette for U.S. President.[2]

Congressional career

Marcantonio was first elected to the
United States House of Representatives from New York in 1934 as a Republican. He served in the House from 1935 until 1937, but was defeated in 1936 for re-election.

Marcantonio's district was centered in his native
East Harlem, New York City, which had many residents and immigrants of
Italian and
Puerto Rican origin. Fluent in Spanish as well as Italian, he was considered an ally of the Puerto Rican and Italian-American communities, and an advocate for the rights of the workers, immigrants, and the poor. In 1939 in Congress, he criticized the 1936 trial in which
Pedro Albizu Campos, president of the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, and some supporters had been convicted of
sedition and other crimes against the United States. In addition to defending the Puerto Rican and Italian communities and common workers, Marcantonio was a strong advocate of Harlem's
African American communities and fought vehemently for
black civil rights decades before the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s.

In either 1937 or 1938, Marcantonio became a member of the
American Labor Party. He was elected to the House again from New York in 1938, and served this time for six terms, from 1939 to 1951, being reelected in the elections of 1940, 1942, 1944, 1946, and 1948. He was so popular in that district that he sometimes won the
Democratic and Republican primaries, as well as the American Labor Party endorsement. Aside from Marcantonio, the only American Laborite congressman was
Leo Isacson, who served in Congress from 1948 to 1949, after winning a special election. He was defeated in the next general election.

In 1949 Marcantonio ran for
mayor of New York City on the American Labor Party ticket, but was defeated. In 1950 he was defeated by the Democrat
James Donovan for his House seat, after a particularly vociferous campaign against the congressman because of his refusal to vote for American participation in the
Korean War. In that election, Donovan had the broad-based popular support of the Democratic, Republican, and
Liberal parties. The passage of the
Wilson Pakula Act in 1947 also played some part in Marcantonio's defeat.[3] The law prevented candidates from running in the primaries of parties with which they were not affiliated. It was widely perceived as being directed against Marcantonio.[3]

Political ideology

Marcantonio, who was arguably one of the most
left wing members of Congress, said that party loyalty was less important than voting with his conscience (he was usually the only member of his party elected to office). He was sympathetic to the
Socialist and
Communist parties, and to
labor unions. He was investigated by the
FBI because of his alleged sympathy with
communism and ties to the Communist Party.[when?]

In 1941, Marcantonio represented Dale Zysman, a high school coach and board member of the New City York
Teachers Union a/k/a
Jack Hardy, a communist writer for
International Publishers, in a New York
Board of Education hearing. Marcantonio asked for a ten-day stay because the Board had failed to present "an itemized bill of particulars," which stay the Board denied. Zysman walked out.[7]

As the sole representative of his party for most of his years in Congress, Marcantonio never held a committee chairmanship. After his defeat in 1950 and the withdrawal of Communist Party support for the ALP, the party soon fell apart.[9]

In 1950, Marcantonio opposed American involvement in the Korean War. He argued that
North Korea had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by
South Korea. He cited articles by
I. F. Stone, a
radical journalist.

Later life

After his defeat in mayoral and congressional elections, Marcantonio continued to practice law. It was his law practice, maintained while in Congress, that had generated the money by which he substantially self-financed his political campaigns.

At first he practiced in
Washington, D.C. but he soon returned to New York City. At the time of his death in 1954, Marcantonio was running for Congress as the candidate of a newly formed third party, the Good Neighbor Party.[9] He died on August 9, 1954, from a
heart attack after coming up the subway stairs on Broadway by City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.

Marcantonio's collection of speeches, I Vote My Conscience (1956), edited by Annette Rubenstein, influenced the next generation of young radicals.[10] His defense of workers rights, his mastery of parliamentary procedure, his ability to relate to the workers in his district while also engaging in worldwide issues, made him a hero to a certain section of the left.[citation needed] Rubenstein's book was reprinted in a new edition in 2002.[10]